I've been reading Melomaniacs - a collection of music-themed short stories by James Huneker. It had been sitting on my Kindle for a while before I finally "picked it up", so to speak. I think I needed a break after finishing Huneker's biography (hagiography?) of Franz Liszt, but I can't remember why I hadn't started on Melomaniacs immediately afterwards. I think it may have been Charles Rosen who put me off the idea by making less-than-flattering remarks about Huneker's fiction in one of his writings. Or maybe he never said anything of the sort, and I really can't figure out why I never started reading Melomaniacs until just recently. For a melomaniac like myself, it ought to have been right up my alley. And indeed it was, as I discovered when I started reading it, in more ways than one. Huneker's alembicated prose reminded me of a time when my own writings had flowed out of true inspiration (or the very least something that could pass for it) - when prose and poetry had been as one. There is even something of the morbid in Huneker's writings that I found truly refreshing and relatable.
Other books I'm reading include Empires of the World: A Language History of the World. The subtitle says it all, though I find the repetition of "world" a bit jarring. Ever since I took a course in historical and comparative linguistics in sophomore year, I've fancied myself an amateur linguist of sorts. I also took an intro-level course in psycholinguistics, which I think makes me amply qualified to expatiate on the subject. Some extracurricular reading and browsing the Internet were all it took to even the playing field with such juggernauts of linguistics as Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker. On a slightly tangential note, having graduated from all forms of college, I think I'm now more than qualified to comment on the infuriating tendency of cheap two-bit authors (cough-William F. Buckley, Jr.-cough) to paint a character as an expert in a particular field because he took a course in it at college. In WFB's case it was the Übermensch right-wing James Bondian CIA agent Blackford Oakes and the field in question was nucular physics*. (*I use the right-wing sanctioned spelling here**.) (**Also, unconventional footnotes.) I did a minor in physics, and I don't consider myself nearly qualified enough to become the CIA's de-facto expert in nucular physics.
I also just finished reading A Prefect's Uncle by P. G. Wodehouse. I thought it was one of his less effective works, not least because the book (published in 1903) reused for a subplot the plot of a short story called "The Prize Poem" (also by Wodehouse and published in 1901), almost without modification. For one thing, the prize poem story was far better suited to the compact form of the short story. For another, the subplot ran parallel to the main plot of the story and had little to no connection to it. It almost seemed as if the point of it was to inflate the work to a length suitable for being published as a novel. The main plot itself was disconnected and ineffective. If you recall, the title of the book is A Prefect's Uncle. One would be pardoned for believing that an uncle would play a significant role in the story. And indeed, when the mischievous uncle, younger in years than the nephew, enrolls at the school, the reader is treated to a fare of suitable shenanigans. But between the prize poem and the lengthy descriptions of cricket matches (which I honestly enjoyed quite a bit more than I imagine readers unfamiliar with the sport would have), the nephew somehow vanishes, and the uncle becomes incorporated into the student body proper. It was disappointing, to say the least. The humor, on the other hand, was not disappointing, and I don't think very many published authors today would be able to produce prose and humor of this quality today, much less at 22.
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